I think I'm a part of the first generation of journalists to skip print media entirely, and I've learned a lot these last few years at Forbes. My work has appeared on TVOvermind, IGN, and most importantly, a segment on The Colbert Report at one point. Feel free to follow me on Twitter or on Facebook, write me on Facebook or just email at paultassi(at)gmail(dot)com. I'm also almost finished with my sci-fi novel series, The Earthborn Trilogy.

You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You

Now that the SOPA and PIPA fights have died down, and Hollywood prepares their next salvo against internet freedom with ACTA and PCIP, it’s worth pausing to consider how the war on piracy could actually be won.

It can’t, is the short answer, and one these companies do not want to hear as they put their fingers in their ears and start yelling. As technology continues to evolve, the battle between pirates and copyright holders is going to escalate, and pirates are always, always going to be one step ahead. To be clear, this is in no way meant to be a “pro-piracy” piece, it is merely attempting to show the inescapable realities of piracy that media companies refuse to acknowledge.

What’s clear is that legislation is not the answer. Piracy is already illegal in the US, and most places around the world, yet it persists underground, but more often in plain sight. Short of passing a law that allows the actual blacklisting of websites like China and Iran, there is no legislative solution. That’s what SOPA and PIPA were attempting to do, but it so obviously trampled on the First Amendment, it was laughed out of existence as the entire internet protested it. The only other thing you could get the internet to agree on was if they tried to institute a ban on cat pictures.

So, what to do? Go the other direction. Realize piracy is a service problem. Right now, from the browser window in which I’m writing this article, it is possible to download and start watching a movie for free in a few swift clicks.

(This is all purely theoretical of course)

1. Move mouse to click on Pirate Bay bookmark

2. Type in “The Hangover 2″ (awful movie, but a new release for the sake of the example)

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Id just like to say that while I understand your position as an artist, I do believe your worries are misguided.

A lot of what mainstream individuals come out with is false such as “they get it for free and will never buy it”

This is completely inaccurate, Ill give you an example; I was attempting to create a 3D land scape on my computer, I was hitting dead ends in terms of inspiration, so I torrented Several Galleries of art for said inspiration.

I then decided that I loved the art pieces and brought every single one I liked and wanted to continue to use for inspiration. I even told the artists in question that I had done it and why I didn’t want to buy some of their work and why I went ahead and brought others.

The issue is, is that the industry of artists of all forms is too well entrenched with large companies where they rely too much on impulse buying and overpricing products to capitalize on impulse buying and when they hear about people downloading illegally all they think is “I DESERVE MORE MONEY” instead of “hmm okay what can we do to reach out to the consumer to combat this without alienating them by calling them all sorts of names and being complete bigots”.

Now I am 100% sure that if your work is good, then you will no doubt make quite a bit of money, but if your work isn’t that good then it will likely be torrented.

People need to understand that a lot of people who torrent 9/10 times go out and buy the very thing they’ve torrented a week previously if they liked it. If they didn’t they just delete it. The 1/10 are the hardcore down loaders who are just free loaders and they are not as big of a threat to the market as people think, In order for things to change the industry and artists need to change their mentality and they need to change generally the consumer does not.

Rule one of business: the customer is always right. Rule one of Hollywood: Always extort money from consumers anyway we can. (which is what brought on the whole privacy problems in the first place).

You are 100% correct. There is no scarcity with digital media, how can there be scarcity when the supply is infinite. Also in opposition to riprowan’s claims there is no scarcity principle at play when film industries price their products, instead they price their products on relative age and ignore all demand and supply. e.g. Two new release movies are often the same price, even though one is clearly more popular than the other such as The Avengers (2012) versus Men in Black 3 (2012). If demand and supply were indeed a contributing factor of film price then MIB3 would be around half the price of The Avengers due to the massive differences in consumer demand for these movies, but alas it is released at a similar if not same price and the prices are only reduced after a couple years of top-price sales.

More evidence that content is overpriced is that (1) Google, (2) NetFlix, and (3) Hulu are all funding their own original content creation to meet demand from users. All three have tried to meet this demand by purchasing more content from the incumbent Big Media companies, but have not been able to reach deals to meet the full demand. Instead, all three internet companies are investing hundreds of millions of dollars to produce their own original content, knowing full well that most of this content will probably flop. But they take the risk anyway because they want to meet customer demand. This indicates that the demands of the incumbent Big Media companies are orders of magnitude too high. Big Media will lose out as other creators take their place.

“There’s always the crowd that circles around me when I bring this up to say “but people will always want physical media,” but there is just no possible way this is the case in 20, 10 or even maybe even five more years.”

Yes, there is.

Trick is, it’ll have to be something worth having. The days of sticking a piece of cheap plastic into an equally cheap plastic container, and then charging a ridiculous sum of money for it, are coming to a close. The entertainment industries need to accept that.

With music, I still buy physical media. However, it’s now a very rare occurrence, and it’s always something particular, something special. It’s also often a package of merchandise, not just a CD in a flimsy jewel case.

I’ve never garnered so much respect for another person’s opinion, until now. I’ve always loved reading your stories, Mr. Tassi, but goodness, these are the most true words I’ve ever read! Good show, sir, I applaud you. :O)

This is hands down one of the best articles written on Forbes I’ve seen in a very long time, great work! I think you could have also mentioned that people do want to willingly give funds for digital creative works, just not to the disrespectful, dogmatic, fat cat d-bags in the industry. Three great examples of this are Flattr, Kickstarter, and VODO. If the writer of this piece had a Flattr account I would send him some prop$ right now.

The model is already here! We’ve got a ROKU player for like $80, super easy to setup. Supports Netflix, Amazon Instant Videos and Hulu Plus and we watch all of them in 1080 HD. Combine all these and you never ever have to buy a DVD/Blu-Ray (not that I did before). Occasionally I rent movies from my cable provider. But you really nailed it on the head – it is all about the convenience. They are desperate and will go to any measures to keep things going instead of adapt. In effect the industry has chosen a slow agonizing death. Apple has iTunes and Apple TV is also an option but I was never a fan of iTunes, seemed too much hassle for me, so I’m boycotting iTunes as well.

One of the biggest insults actually is paying for the movie and then getting subjected to a series of unskippable trailers (often times it’s for the movie or piece of technology you are using at the moment to view the ads.) Also, going out to films is terrible. You sit there and are subjected to the pre-show commercials (which are the worst.) The growing resentment is not just that they are charging too much money, it’s that they have the right to treat you like a stupid, brainless idiot consumer at every turn.